Programming Languages-Other

A programming language is a formal constructed language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Thousands of different programming languages have been created, mainly in the computer field, and many more still are being created every year. The description of a programming language is usually split into the two components of syntax (form) and semantics (meaning). Some languages are defined by a specification document (for example, the C programming language is specified by an ISO Standard), while other languages (such as Perl) have a dominant implementation that is treated as a reference. Some languages have both, with the basic language defined by a standard and extensions taken from the dominant implementation being common.

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In discussions about what programming languages to learn, the usual suspects are generally things like Java, C++, PHP, Python, & JavaScript. Usually no one mentions a classic like COBOL, but perhaps it's time to rethink that?

Cobol and Fortran were my first programming languages and helped make my decision to switch my college major from Electrical Engineering to Computer Science. Some of the companies I have worked for in the last ten years still have large implementations of Cobol code. Based upon the article, I guess I may still have some work I can do when I start collecting that Social Security check :).

COBOL was fundamental to my first professional programming job back in the early 1970s. This struck me as interesting while thinking how good my pay was in those years with COBOL, and now the pay is becoming even better, perhaps even improving for a couple decades to come. The 'pay' curve could be fun to work out by the time COBOL is gone.

As with most languages, well written COBOL might not be the most common found, and poorly written COBOL is probably easy to find. I'm pretty sure I'd feel a little embarrassed to analyze some programs I wrote 40 years ago. I know that COBOL modules that I've written in the past decade is much better quality. It hasn't been a major part of my programming work, but there've been a couple specific projects where COBOL simply did the job best. (I'm not sure how many different languages I've needed to learn in my career.)

Makes me smile to think that in a few years there might be COBOL code of mine that's still active over a half-century span.

Programming Languages-Other

A programming language is a formal constructed language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Thousands of different programming languages have been created, mainly in the computer field, and many more still are being created every year. The description of a programming language is usually split into the two components of syntax (form) and semantics (meaning). Some languages are defined by a specification document (for example, the C programming language is specified by an ISO Standard), while other languages (such as Perl) have a dominant implementation that is treated as a reference. Some languages have both, with the basic language defined by a standard and extensions taken from the dominant implementation being common.